In Too Deep by Billy O'Callaghan

down the front step, steadfastly ignoring him even when the cloying stench of excrement announced that he had soiled himself. Sometimes she would leave him sitting unattended until nightfall, and when she’d strip off his clothes she’d find even the flesh of his back clammy with his own filth. Any guilt she felt over acting in such callous ways was nothing more than a light fluttering in her stomach, almost identical to a stirring of excitement, and easily enough ignored. She’d smile at Paudie, a smile she perfected a little more with each offering, and sing out an apology, maybe plant a kiss on his forehead and explain that she was just so busy, what with one thing and another, and surely he saw that, but of course she’d do her very best, her absolute damnedest, to ensure that it would not happen again. His eyes were the same small pale eyes that had fixed their sights on her back in the Ballinascarty céili hall on that long-ago Friday night, narrowly set and gleaming still, but with a ferocity that could only be dreamed of now. The love was gone, if it had ever been there at all, or had ever been anything more than lust mistaken for something fine, but a certain wisdom was in evidence now, an understanding of what exactly was happening to him, and why.
    Occasionally, the district nurse would stop by to visit, and Maggie would stand there and watch while the usual cursory examinations were carried out. She never tried to explain away the bruises or abrasions except to say that Paudie could be a real handful at times, especially when dragging him into his chair or lifting him into bed. The nurse nodded, understanding, and murmured how hard it must be, having to bear such a burden. There were places, she said, over a cup of tea at the kitchen table, after Paudie had been dressed again and placed in his usual doorway position, places where trained staff would look after him. It would be a respite for both of them, because no man wanted to be such a trial to his loved ones.
    Maggie sipped her tea and smiled. ‘No,’ she said, ‘he needs me and I need him. I can’t give him up to strangers. And that’s all there is to it.’
    Time brought nothing but a kind of immunity. Maggie
came to accept her shows of wickedness and, in the same way, Paudie found some way of handling the pain. If conscience could become callused, then so too could resolve. Soon enough, Maggie found that she needed something more to sate her appetite for revenge than the little pinch-and-twist indulgences of snagging his flesh with her chewed nails as she dressed him, or forcing him to consume all the things he hated until he began to gag and vomit in response, or leaving him to sit sodden in his own urine for entire days until his groin and inner thighs shone with the bright pink of yet another angry rash. When such cruelties began to lose an element of their glow, she raised the stakes, freshened them all over again by taking time to announcing exactly what little savagery she planned to inflict on him next. First in whispers, her mouth almost lovingly close to his ear so that memories of when they had been newlyweds could not help but flash through his stubborn mind, and then, when even that began to lose its lustre, in a calm, terribly logical voice that had never been hers.
    â€˜Time for your wash, my love. I do hope that the water won’t be too hot for you this time.’ Or: ‘I have a special dinner for you today, Paudie. Raw sausages. Good for the bowels, they say.’ Mute apart from the small moaning cry that was the reaction to the very worst of his misery, there was nothing Paudie could do or say to help himself.
    And life would have continued on for both of them in such a way, an endless game of cat and mouse, had death not interceded. Maggie awoke to a perfect July dawn with the sense that something irrevocable had occurred. Beside her in the bed, Paudie lay stiff as stone, but the